The challenge of CrossFit

CrossFit devotees say its blend of functionality and high intensity pays dividends outside the gym.

By Arlene BachanovLenawee Pulse

This story first appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of Lenawee Pulse magazine.

Inside BlackHorse CrossFit at 2921 Treat St. in Adrian, a dozen or so men and women are going through their workout routines, loud music setting the tempo, when owner Sean Lazio calls their attention to what he’s ready to demonstrate. Picking up a rod that stands in for a barbell, he shows them the proper form for an overhead lift.

He then demonstrates a box jump, which, as its name implies, is a huge hop from the floor to the top of a box that in this case is about 3 feet tall. The participants will have to do a series of them as part of their final routine of the evening, and he reminds them not to spend too much time on the floor in between jumps.

“The more time spent at the bottom, the harder it is to get to the top,” he says to the group.

Lazio then sets a 10-minute timer, and what’s designed to be the hardest 10 minutes of a CrossFit participant’s entire day begins.

The trio doing this exercise, one man and two women, go repeatedly through a series of barbell lifts, both over their heads and “dead lifts” from the floor to the waist, and box jumps.

The timer steadily ticks down. By about four minutes in, all three people are clearly tiring, their sets slowing in tempo. Sweat begins to drip. “Keep it up!” Lazio shouts, with others in the room adding their encouragement.

Seven-and-a-half minutes elapse and quite a bit of walking around the equipment now has to occur as the classmembers need recovery time. The male classmember sheds his shirt before hoisting the barbells for another set. For the two women, the box jumps have turned into stepping on and off their boxes, still quite a workout given the boxes’ height.

The timer buzzes and the exhausting routine finally comes to a halt. People begin putting away the equipment as another class begins its warmups.

Kylie Myers of Onsted, one of the two women who undertook the grueling 10-minute finish to the class, walks over to her husband, Dan, and their 14-month-old daughter, Gretchen.

Dan joined BlackHorse in February and since that time the former college football player has lost some 45 pounds but added plenty of muscle. Kylie joined in March at Dan’s encouragement because she had been working out at a different facility since her daughter’s birth to lose the “baby weight,” “and the other gym just wasn’t doing it,” she says.

But since starting CrossFit, the 25-year-old has not only lost that extra weight but has gained strength to the point that she can now lift double the weight as she did at first. And she’s gained something else, too.

“People here say they see more confidence,” she says.

Dan’s mother has even become a BlackHorse member.

Kylie tries to come to the facility every day it’s open, and says it has gotten addictive. “If I don’t come for a day, I just feel off. Blah.”

Not that it felt that way at first. After her very first CrossFit workout, “I cried at night,” she says, laughing. “I didn’t want to come back.” But “after the first week of hurt, it was better.”

Today, she says, she has no regrets at all about joining. In fact, “I only wish I’d started it sooner.”

CrossFit was originally developed by Greg Glassman, a personal trainer in Santa Cruz, Calif., over several decades and had its first affiliated facility in Seattle. Today, the company claims it has more than 5,500 affiliated gyms worldwide.

Glassman’s goal was to create a way for people to have a high-intensity workout of functional movements. Participants do a wide range of activities, from weightlifting to jumping rope, from pushups and sit-ups to running and rowing.

Lazio, quoting a slogan familiar to CrossFit devotees, says it’s all about preparing people “for the unknown and the unknowable.”

“We do anything and everything to prepare people for what they do outside the gym,” whether it’s active sports like mountain biking or everyday tasks like carrying groceries or picking up a youngster.

Dan, the former football player for whom CrossFit is a family activity, says the workout is “functional fitness for everything you do in life,” and helps him with everything from mowing the lawn to moving heavy things.

A person who does CrossFit, says Lazio, can expect to gain not only strength but agility, coordination and balance as well. “And they can gain confidence too,” he says.

And while anyone who drops in on a CrossFit workout might be overwhelmed by how hard it all looks, “people come in here who've never been in a gym in their life,” and the exercises start at whatever level the person is at.

“Everyone’s got to start somewhere,” says Dan as he helps Kylie get their toddler ready so the family can leave for the evening. “When it comes to fitness, the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

For more information on CrossFit, contact Lazio at 951-966-4927 or by email at sean@blackhorsecrossfit.com. The facility is online at www.facebook.com/BlackhorseCrossfit and at blackhorsecrossfit.com.